PCI Express 4.0 Standard Approved by PCI-SIG

We still have not seen any PCI Express 3.0 cards, but that is not stopping PCI-SIG (the ones controlling the PCI standard) from approving the PCI Express 4.0 standard. PCI Express 4.0 will allow for 16 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) as the bit rate, which basically doubles what PCIe 3.0 can do. The new PCIe 4.0 standard should be announced in 2014 with enterprise and mainstream markets getting products in 2015 and 2016, respectively. PCI-SIG determines that PCIe 4.0 can be manufactured in mainstream silicon process, run copper interconnects, and maintain the same power level as PCIe 3.0 cards. All of that sounds pretty impressive considering PCIe 4.0 doubles what PCIe 3.0 can do, but we will not be seeing any PCIe 4.0 products for a while. PCIe 3.0 still has to come out first, but when the PCIe 4.0 cards hit, PCI-SIG says the new ones will be backwards compatible.